GeekLikeMe

Tuesday: March 2, 2010

The full description of the patent is available over on the other side of the click. Do all mobile carriers and device makers (oh, hi Apple) have something to worry about now that Google has acquired this patent?

Monday: January 7, 2013

Its updated Mindstorms EV3 runs on new Linux firmware that's ready for Android and iOS control out of the box, creates an overall more hackable platform and allows further programming on the core Intelligent Brick itself; accordingly, there's an SD card slot for local storage. A built-in infrared sensor expands the possibilities for a more autonomous design, as well -- Lego suggests that EV3 constructs can follow other moving gadgets, or even their creators, around the room.

Tuesday: December 18, 2012

The answer is that most of the coders behind today’s popular websites and services are deploying their code when it’s ready—not at some pre-determined point when downtime may not be noticed. It’s called continuous code deployment, or some variation on that theme, and everyone from Facebook and Netflix to smaller services do it. While it may occasionally cause a few blips, those blips should be shorter and less catastrophic.

Thursday: December 13, 2012

The long awaited Google Maps application is finally here and it actually looks and functions very well. There have been numerous reports that this app beats out it's Android counterpart in terms of design and overall look and feel. All of the characteristics you expected from a proper maps application are here - turn by turn directions, vector maps, rotational maps and general location information. Some amazing work here from Google.

Monday: December 10, 2012

Turns out that Google would need about $140 billion to roll out their fiber network to the entire continental United States. At present time, they only have about $45 billion in the bank and that doesn't begin to include other associative costs. Long story short, if you really want to try out Google Fiber you should think about moving to Kansas.

Monday: November 14, 2011

According to the article, this magical place (dubbed 'Google X') is where Google may or may not be working on the following futuristic concepts: 1) an internet fridge that orders food when it's low, 2) driver-less cars, 3) space elevators, 4) personal assistant robots for your home, 5) networked coffee pots and gardening tools and finally 6) training monkeys to fly airplanes for special covert operations.

Wednesday: November 9, 2011

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations.

That's a shame but it makes sense given Apple's strategy and history of making certain features exclusive to particular iPhone models. Not clear on why devices other than iPhones have to miss out on this. The iPad 2 should have enough horsepower to run Siri without an issue (same for their notebook line as well).

Monday: August 15, 2011

Google has taught us all that people are too busy to remember version numbers these days. It's better just to keep updating software and have to worry about pesky version number conventions. Mozilla thinks this is a good idea and has decided to adopt this release schedule for future non-version-numbered releases of Firefox. Good for them.